How Kissinger Won the Middle East for America

I am writing this (may God forgive me) on Yom Kippur. Exactly 43 years ago,
at this exact moment, the sirens sounded.

We were sitting in the living room, looking out on one of Tel Aviv’s main streets.
The city was completely silent. No cars. No traffic of any kind. A few children
were riding about on their bicycles, which is allowed on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s
holiest day. Just like now.

Rachel, my wife, I, and our guest, Professor Hans Kreitler, were in deep conversation.
The professor, a renowned psychologist, was living nearby, so he could come
on foot.

And then the silence was pierced by a siren. For a moment we thought that it
was a mistake, but then it was joined by another and another. We went to the
window and saw a commotion. The street, that had been totally empty a few minutes
before, began to fill up with vehicles, military and civilian.

And then the radio, which had been silent for Yom Kippur, came on. War had
broken out.

A few days ago I was asked if I was prepared to talk on TV about the role of
Henry Kissinger in this war. I agreed, but at the last moment the program was
canceled, because the station had to devote the time to showing Jews asking
God for forgiveness at the Western Wall (alias the Wailing Wall). In these Netanyahu
times, God, of course, comes first.

So, instead of talking on TV, I shall write down my thoughts on the subject
here.

Henry Kissinger has always intrigued me. Once my friend Yael, the daughter
of Moshe Dayan, took me – in the great man’s absence, of course, since
he was my enemy – to his large collection of unread books and asked me
to choose a book as a present. I chose a book of Kissinger’s, and was much
impressed by it.

Like Shimon Peres and I, Kissinger was born in 1923. He was a few months older
than the other two of us. His family left Nazi Germany five years later than
I and went to the US, via England. We both had to start working very early,
but he went on with his studies and became a professor, while poor me never
finished elementary school.

I was impressed by the wisdom of his books. He approached history without sentiment
and dwelled especially on the Congress of Vienna, after Napoleon’s downfall,
in which a group of wise statesmen laid the groundwork for a stable, absolutist
Europe. Kissinger stressed the importance of their decision to invite the representative
of vanquished France (Talleyrand). They realized that France must be part of
the new system. To ensure peace, they believed, no one should be left out of
the new system.

Unfortunately, Kissinger in power disregarded this wisdom of Kissinger the
Professor. He left the Palestinians out.

The subject I was to speak about on TV was a question that has intrigued and
troubled Israeli historians since that fateful Yom Kippur: Did Kissinger know
about the impending Egyptian-Syrian attack? Did he deliberately abstain from
warning Israel, because of his own nefarious designs?

After the war, Israel was rent asunder by one question: why had our government,
led by Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, disregarded
all the signs of the coming attack? Why had they not called up the army reserves
in time? Why had they not sent the tanks to our strongholds along the Suez Canal?

When the Egyptians attacked, the line was thinly held by second-class troops.
Most soldiers were sent home for the high religious holiday. The line was easily
overrun.

Israeli intelligence knew of course of the massive movement of Egyptian units
towards the canal. They disregarded it as an empty maneuver to frighten Israel.

To understand this, one has to remember that after the incredible victory of
the Israeli army only six years earlier, when it smashed all the neighboring
armies in six days, our army had abysmal contempt for the Egyptian armed forces.
The idea that they could dare to carry out such a momentous operation seemed
ridiculous.

Add to this the general contempt for Anwar al-Sadat, the man who had inherited
power from the legendary Gamal Abd-al-Nasser a few years earlier. Among the
group of "Free Officers" who, led by Nasser, had carried out the bloodless
1952 revolution in Egypt, Sadat was considered the least intelligent, and therefore
appointed by consent as Nasser’s deputy.

In Egypt, a country of innumerable jokes, there was joke about that, too. Sadat
had a conspicuous brown spot on his forehead. According to the joke, whenever
a subject came up in a Free Officers’ Council meeting, and everyone expressed
his view, Sadat would stand up last and start to speak. Nasser would put his
finger on his forehead, press it gently and say: "Sit down, Anwar, sit
down."

In the course of the six years between the wars, Sadat several times conveyed
to Golda that he was ready for peace negotiations, based on Israel’s withdrawal
from the occupied Sinai Peninsula. Golda contemptuously refused. (In fact, Nasser
himself had decided on such a move just before he died. I played a small role
in conveying this information to our government.)

Back to 1973: almost at the last moment Israel was warned by a well-placed
spy, no less than Nasser’s son-in-law. The message gave the exact date of the
impending attack, but the wrong hour: instead of noon, it predicted the early
evening. A difference of several fateful hours. In Israel it was later debated
whether the man was a double agent and had give the false hour on purpose. It
was too late to ask him – he had died in mysterious circumstances.

When Golda informed Kissinger about the impending Egyptian move, he warned
her not to carry out a preemptive strike, which would put Israel in the wrong.
Golda, trusting Kissinger, obeyed, contrary to the views of the Israel Chief
of Staff, David Elazar, nicknamed Dado.

Kissinger also delayed informing his own boss, President Nixon, by two hours.

So what was Kissinger’s game?

For him, the main American aim was to drive the Soviets out of the Arab world,
leaving the US as the sole power in the region.

In his world of "realpolitik", this was the only objective that mattered.
Everybody else, including us poor Israelis, were just pawns on the giant chessboard.

A major but controlled war was for him the practical way to make everybody
in the region dependent on the US.

When the Egyptian and Syrian attacks initially succeeded, Israel was in panic.
Dayan, who in this crisis showed himself to be the nincompoop he really was,
bewailed the "destruction of the Third Temple" (adding our state to
the two Jewish temples of antiquity which were destroyed by the Assyrians and
the Romans respectively.) The army command, under Dado, kept its cool and planned
its countermoves with admirable precision.

But munitions were running out quickly and Golda turned in despair to Kissinger.
He set in motion an "air bridge" of supplies, giving Israel just enough
to defend itself. Not more.

The Soviet Union was helpless to interfere. Kissinger was king of the situation.

With remarkable resilience (and the weapons delivered by Kissinger) the Israeli
army turned the tables, pushing the Syrians back well beyond their starting
point and nearing Damascus. On the Southern front, Israeli units crossed the
Suez Canal and could have started an offensive towards Cairo.

It was a rather confused picture: an Egyptian army was still east of the Canal,
practically encircled but still able to defend itself, while the Israeli army
was behind its back, west of the canal, also in a dangerous position, liable
to be cut off from its homeland. Altogether, a classic "fight with reversed
fronts".

If the war had run its course, the Israeli army would have reached the gates
of Damascus and Cairo, and the Egyptian and Syrian armies would have begged
for a cease-fire on Israeli terms.

That’s where Kissinger came in.

The Israeli advance was stopped on Kissinger’s orders 101 km from Cairo. There
a tent was set up and permanent cease-fire negotiations started.

Egypt was represented by a senior officer, Abd-al-Rani Gamassi, who soon captured
the sympathy of the Israeli journalists. The Israeli representative was Aharon
Yariv, former chief of army intelligence, a member of the government and a general
of the reserves.

Yariv was soon recalled to his seat in the cabinet. He was replaced by a very
popular regular army general, Israel Tal, nicknamed Talik, who happened to be
a friend of mine.

Talik was devoted to peace, and I often urged him to leave the army and become
the leader of the Israeli peace camp. He refused, because his overriding passion
was to create the Merkava, an original Israeli tank that would give its crew
maximum security.

Immediately after the fighting I met Talik regularly for lunch in a well-known
restaurant. Passersby may have wondered about these two – the famous tank
general and the journalist universally hated by the entire establishment –
conversing together.

Talik told me – in confidence, of course – about what had happened:
one day Gamassy had taken him aside and told him that he had received new instructions
– instead of talking about a cease-fire, he could negotiate an Israel-Egyptian
peace.

Immensely excited, Talik flew to Tel-Aviv and disclosed the news to Golda Meir.
But Golda was cool. She told Talik to abstain from any talk about peace. When
she saw his utter consternation, she explained that she had promised Kissinger
that any talks about peace must be held under American auspices.

And so it happened: a cease-fire agreement was signed and a peace conference
was called in Geneva, officially under joint US and Soviet auspices.

I went to Geneva to see what would happen. Kissinger was there to dictate terms,
but Andrei Gromyko, his Soviet counterpart, was a tough customer. After a few
speeches, the conference adjourned without results. (For me it was an important
event, because there I met a British journalist, Edward Mortimer, who arranged
for me to meet the PLO representative in London, Said Hamami. Thus the first
Israeli-PLO meeting came about. But that is another story.)

The Yom Kippur war cost many thousands of lives, Israeli, Egyptian and Syrian.
Kissinger achieved his goal. The Soviets lost the Arab world to the United States.

Author: Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery is a longtime Israeli peace activist. Since 1948 he has advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1974, Uri Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the PLO leadership. In 1982 he was the first Israeli ever to meet Yasser Arafat, after crossing the lines in besieged Beirut. He served three terms in the Israeli Knesset and is the founder of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc). Visit his Web site.
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